Visions of Nosgoth: Lovecraft's style
by Tarja the wind witch
Summary: Germany 1932. A scholar has horrific visions about a decaying world. Two alienists try to unveil the truth. Experimental fic in the style of HP Lovecraft. Any constructive criticism accepted.


An experimental fiction that takes after "Beyond the wall of sleep" by HP Lovecraft. I just wanted to try and write something in the style of his short stories, and I thought that Nosgoth was a world weird enough for him to like. (There is even one of the Ancient Ones on the loose, the damn squid.)  
Any constructive criticism is well accepted and encouraged.  
Please feel free in pointing out any mistakes/ mistypings you may find. Criticism is all about improving.

Disclaimers: I do not own anything and do not make any money from this fic. it is just an experiment in creative writing.  
Any reference to real places or people, living or dead , is entirely coincidental.

Enjoy!

* * *

Tubingen, 29 July 1932.

To the esteemed professors of the German Psychiatric Society.

Facts such as the ones we are going to describe in this report can be easily deemed as the false constructions of a disturbed mind. Had we not witnessed every single moment of the unfolding of the events, we would not believe them also.  
Still they are true, and we have decided to expose them to the scientific community, in hopes of bringing further light on the complexity of human mind an the monsters that spawn from its corruption.  
We are well aware of the risk of being labeled as madmen ourselves, still it is our duty to divulge the strange facts concerning the committal and death of Professor von B. in Tubingen Asylum.

Professor von B. was admitted in Tubingen Asylum in May, 1932. He was a professor of archeology in the city University, a renown scholar, whose works on Mesopotamian antiquities were highly regarded in the international archaeological community.  
He returned in December, 1931 from a six-months expedition in Persia, where he had unhearthed an ancient palatial comlex in the environs of Baghdad. After a tour of lectures and symposiums in various universities throughout Europe, he came back to Tubingen, to resume his teaching.

His admission papers state that his mental problems began in early March 1931.  
During one of his lessons, professor von B. abruptly stopped his speech and fell prey of a violent seizure of epileptiod type. His medical history, however had never recorded any episode of this kind and none of his relatives had ever suffered from epilepsy or nervous diseases. Professor von B. recovered quickly and completely from this accident.

Two weeks passed without further events, until one day a student, passing in front of the professor's lodgings, heard terrible screams coming from his apartment. The door was forced without further delay and the rescuers found professor von B. on the floor of his bedroom in his night-gown. he was screaming and crying, raving about "the souls of the damned" and "the blue Angel of Death".  
After a while, professor von B. calmed down and lost consciousness, claiming afterwards of not remembering anything.

The doctor who assisted him then filed the case as nervous breakdown, caused by the stress of previous months. Tubingen University gave professor von B. a six-months leave to recover himself.  
He subsequently moved to his daughter's house in the country, with the intent of relaxing and writing a book about his latest discoveries.  
While at his daughter's house, however, the hallucinations worsened, becoming more violent and frequent, to the point of forcing his relatives to commit him to this Asylum.  
They reported that his hallucinations had a common theme: in his deliriums he raved mainly about a blue twisted Hell and the Angel of Death. Sometimes he also talked about "a pale king with a cruel sword" and and about "the neverending columns that sustain the roof of sky". His tone had a strange prophetic quality, as if he was witnessing sacred events.  
He was never violent during his fits and never remembered anything at all afterwards.  
At his admission his case was classified as "Religious mania with hallucinations".

Professor von B. had been a tall and portly man in his sixties when his misadventures began. Now, after just two months of disease, he was rather gaunt and hollow -eyed, but his eyes were still sharp and vivid.  
He was a cultivated man and though his long travels had accustomed him to little comfort and some hardship, his reaction to the asylum was of outrage at first and of depression subsequently.  
He was treated with the utmost care and kept separate from the other patients, because he was apparently sane, except from his fits of madness.  
Nothing happened for two days, except that professor von B. refused his food on the first day.  
On the third day from his admission, the patient had another fit, the first that we, Dr. Andreas Schultz and Karl Kleinpeter, could witness personally.

We were visiting another patient when the attendants summoned us just in time to witness the bizarre event.  
Professor von B. was standing in the middle of his room, hair disheveled and eyes full of such a deep terror that it almost shocked us also. It was as if he was witnessing a terrible, unspeakable spectacle. And maybe he was.  
His hands were raised in front of his face in a protective gesture.  
"They are calling him!" professor von B. screamed piteously, cowering and trembling .  
"Hash'ak'gik! Hash'ak'gik! Hash'ak'gik!" he mumbled, only to resume screaming shortly afterwards.  
"The blood of the sacrifice is spilled. Oh, please, no!" he started shaking violently and backed towards the wall.  
"There it comes the beast, horrible and blind. And thirsty. Oh, gods!" he sobbed.  
We gestured to the attendants, who seized hold of him and dragged him mercilessly to the showers.  
The dousing with ice cold water did not calm him, it only worsened his conditions. He started flailing and screaming as another hallucination kicked in.  
"Please, make it stop! Stop the screams! - he shrieked, though he was the only one screaming in the room – The pale king's son burns in the Lake, broken and bleeding. He screams! Oh, he screams! It makes my heart bleed. Please, make him stop!" On his face was an expression of pure, maddening terror.  
Fearing further harm, my colleague and I decided to suspend the treatment. As soon as the water was turned off, professor von B. went limp in the attendants' hands and lost consciousness, apparently exhausted.  
We ordered to put him back in his room with a strait-jacket, just to be sure.

As soon as he woke up hours later, exhausted and dishevelled, we started questioning him. At first he was not willing to cooperate, but we managed to win his attention by promising that he would be relieved from the strait-jacket if he behaved.  
As soon as he agreed, we freed him and proceded to question him in a amiable way. Despite his fits of madness, professor von B. still retained all his good manners and his culture. He was much intersted in our report about his last fit and asked intelligent questions about his visions. We told him that we excluded a Biblical theme and suggested a mesopotamian background. We speculated about the entity called Hash'ak'gik. Could it be an ancient mesopotamian god or demon? Professor von B. excluded categorically the possibility, as he had never known anything about an entity bearing that name. Though none the wiser about the origin of his visions, the patient started asking questions about his others fits. He seemed intrigued by the common characters of his visions. He mused about it for a while, then made a very clever remark: "It is as if i am telling a story I know nothing about."  
Prompted by his suggestion, we inquired about any ancient legend which could bear any resemblance to his visions. He remembered none.

Taken aback by the lack of results but not desisting, Dr. Kleinpeter, quite an expert in the field of hypnosis, started questioning the patient about what he remembered of the events directly preceding and following his fits.  
The patient reported that before the fits he had the impression of being detached from his body, of floating about. he described it as a sensation akin to fainting.  
Dr. Kleinpeter recognised the symptoms as prodromic to a state of trance, like the one achievable through drugs or hypnosis. He theorized thet the patient's visions originated by a subcoscious state of mind, unreachable outside dreams or trance. Thus he explained why professor von B. could not retain any memory of those experiences. Subsequently he proposed hypnosis as the safest and surest way to unhearth the hidden memories.  
Professor von B. accepted enthusistically and later that day we had the first session of hypnosis.  
Dr. Kleinpeter prepared the patient with a mixture of drugs (of which the exact composition you can find in attachment A) in order to relax him and loosen his copnscious inhibitions, then he proceeded hypnotizing him.  
During that and the following sessions, of which we kept a recorded proof, the patient, prompted by our questions, calmly described his visions.  
He talked a great deal about the "blue foul limbo where the spirits awaited,wailing and crying". He described it as a distorted, warped reflection of the real world, inhabited by horrible creatures which preyed on the souls of the damned.  
He also speaked about "the Pillars", made of stone and magic, which sustained the structure of the world, now broken and ruined but not beyond repair.  
But what was most disturbing was hearing him recall the visions of the Angel of Death, a lonely creature seeking his revenge.

We gathered a lot of informations from the hypnosis sessions, allowing us to recognize a complex structure and symbology in the patient's visions, but not any likely cause of his madness.  
He did not seem to be represented by any of the symbolical characters, he had visions on each of them but always from a third person view.  
He had never demonstrated any morbid interest in death,and decay, which instead are the prominent features of his inner world, and we did not suppose that his scholarly interest for the past could be held as proof of his necrophilia.  
Still intrigued, we decided to perform a new experiment, with the explicit consent and encouragement of our patient.  
Dr. Kleinpeter induced a deeper state of trance on the patient and brought him to a receptive state of mind, hoping to elicit a new vision and guide him through it, in order to discover more about his inner world.  
We succeeded: soon after falling in trance professor von B. started talking excitedly. Dr. Kleinpeter guided him, asking questions every now and then.

Here is the transcription of the most important and terrible part of the experiment.

_Dr Kleinpeter:_ Where are you now, professor?  
_Professor von B:_ nervous, looking around warily I am floating in the warped limbo. The souls of the dead are everywhere.  
_Dr.K: _What are they doing?  
_von _B: They float and wail, though they have no mouth or voice.  
_Dr.Schmidt: _what do they look like?  
_von B: _mumbles they look like floating lights. looks around again, scared I hear something...  
_Dr.S:_ What is it?  
_von B:_ Hush! He is coming! greatly alarmed  
_Dr _K: lowering his voice Who?  
_von B:_ almost whispering The Angel of Death...  
_Dr K:_ Please, describe him for us, professor.  
_von B: _still whispering, looks insistently to his left He is a ruined creature, skeletal, disfigured. But his eyes are full of hate and white fire. He has wings but tattered and limp, and cannot fly anymore. And his sword... his voice trails  
_Dr. S: _What about his sword?  
_von B: _It is made of light, blue and white and blinding .blinks repeatedly It hums and twists upon itself. And it hungers, like a living thing. It hungers...  
_Dr. S: _How do you know it?  
_von B: _looking left with wild eyes I feel it. Don't you? Don't you all feel it? Pause. He widens his eyes further in terror and screams Oh, my God! He has seen me!  
_Dr K:_ Has anyone seen you before?  
_von B:_ trembles No, never. But he does. Those fiery eyes stare at me!  
_Dr K:_ Calm down, professor! He cannot hurt you. It is all in your head.  
_von B: _shakes violently and backs away as if from a menace He comes towards me. Oh, it is terrible! pause He wants to know who I am. another long pause He orders me to go away. hysterical  
_Dr K: _very excited Ask him something. Anything!  
_Dr S: _upset He is going to collapse, Karl, bring him back!

Professor von B. fainted, eyes rolling in their sockets. His body remained still for a moment, then he got to his feet. His movements were more fluid and energetic than ever. He stood tall and proud in front of us and glared at us with baleful eyes, full of whitish fire. The "presence" addressed us with a strong and much younger voice. "Stop messing with this man's soul. No one is meant to see such things." it said severely. With those words the "presence" disappeared and the patient's body collapsed again on the floor.

For a moment we were too shocked to act rationally, then our training kicked in. We checked the patient's vital signs and found him still alive but unconscious. shortly afterwards he fell into a violent seizure, from which he emerged in a sorry state, the left side of his body paralized.  
We diagnosed apoplexy, probably caused by the stress of submitting to our last experiment.  
Professor von B. never recovered. He died two days after without ever regaining consciousness.  
We still do not know what happened during our last experiment.  
Had we uncovered a second personality, hidden in the depths of our patient's subconsciousness?  
Or had we had a glimpse of a different universe altoghether?  
The only thing we know is that the presence's voice was nothing like the professor's.  
And his eyes were not human.


End file.
